The Region - News from June 26, 1986

A long-standing federal court ban on the use of IQ tests to decide which schoolchildren should be placed in educable mentally retarded (EMR) classes was upheld by a three-judge panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. The jurists concluded in a split decision that San Francisco District Court Judge Robert F. Peckham properly decided in 1979 that the procedure violated federal equal protection laws, because an inordinate number of black children were being placed in educable mentally retarded classes on the basis of IQ tests geared to the white middle class. The 9th Circuit panel, however, reversed Peckham’s finding that the U.S. Constitution had also had been violated.